Running your own server (@home)

May 15, 2006 @ 17:44 | In Internet, Linux | 7 Comments | del.icio.us digg devbump rss
http://entland.homelinux.com/images/zen.jpg

I wanted to start a topic (the first on Linux, I promise more on this) about the hardware machine where this blog is hosted: a machine installed in one corner of my living room. I bought the box to be the server for all my machines at home (personal computer, media center, videogame consoles, ip camera, fileserver…). Being network security one of my hobbies I am always playing with security tools. That is one of the reasons why I decided to host this blog in my home server: to play with a new toy. :-)

In the past, whenever I installed a linux distribution (SUSE most of the times) I always finished mutating it to my own distribution due to the fact that these clasic distributions evolve too slow. This was frustrating and time consuming for me because I had to mantain lot of packages and some big changes (gcc, glibc) could break the system. When I was starting to build my own personal distribution (based on Linux From Scratch) I discovered Gentoo. Gentoo Linux is the perfect distribution to me. It is based on source (every package you install must be compiled) and it is continuously evolving like an organic system.

This is the current hardware configuration for my Linux Box:

I have an internet connection with a dynamic IP. To be always accessible I’m using the services from DynDNS.

And that is enough for today, my next article on this topic will be about tips & tricks on security to avoid to be owned. :-o




  1. Looser… Silverstone rules!



    Comment by Uch
    May 19, 2006 @ 4:57 #

  2. Pentum IV Celeron 2.4Ghz 1Gb Ram ??? I am running…
    My Soul…
    with a Celeron 450 MHz 192MB Ram !!!
    And it works…



    Comment by kanenas.net
    May 31, 2006 @ 1:13 #

  3. Pentium IV was the minimum configuration available from shuttle. And I wanted to have a shuttle in my living room.

    My last server, was a pentium 100Mhz running linux.

    I’m using it for MediaCenter. I’m seriously considering buying a VIA for my server.



    Comment by ent
    May 31, 2006 @ 2:11 #

  4. Hello Ent,
    Have you finally bought a VIA system? I’ve been thinking about buy one but i read that it’s not a good idea to use it as a media center, what do you think?

    Great blog, keep it up!



    Comment by Rand
    July 9, 2008 @ 18:59 #

  5. Hi Rand,

    No, I didn’t buy a VIA. The server described in this post is still working and hosting this blog.

    I bought two additional machines, a NAS server and a XBOX for media center running the best software for this purpose.

    My next machine will be probably a better media center (because the XBOX is unable to handle HD). I am thinking in mac mini now that XBMC runs in that platform.



    Comment by ent
    July 13, 2008 @ 14:45 #

  6. Hi Ent,

    I heard VIA is not able to handle HD, yet. I’ve been thinking about buy a mac mini too but i’m not sure if it’s quiet enough to use it as a media center, do you know if it’s quiet or not?



    Comment by Rand
    July 13, 2008 @ 15:13 #

  7. Yes, noise is not a problem for the Mac Mini. But I am not sure if it will be able to play 1080p content…

    I think I will wait for the next Mac Mini version.

    Please, keep me informed about your decisions. :)



    Comment by ent
    July 14, 2008 @ 1:01 #


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